The head of China’s organ transplantation committee announced in December that the practice of harvesting organs from executed prisoners in China to use in transplantations would end on 1 January 2015.

Huang Jiefu, director of the China Organ Donation and Transplantation Committee and a former vice minister in the Ministry of Health, told a meeting of China’s Organ Procurement Organization in Kunming, “Starting from 1 January 2015 China will totally end its reliance on the …